Manhattan woman admits she tried to hide unconscious man’s fentanyl from Kansas cops

A Kansas woman may be headed to federal prison after admitting that she tried to hide fentanyl from police as first responders helped an unconscious man.

Chanel Toliver was sentenced Tuesday in U.S. District Court in Topeka to seven months imprisonment, followed by two years of probation. However, due to the coronavirus pandemic, the judge recommended home confinement because her asthma classifies her as high-risk.

Toliver previously pleaded guilty to one felony count of removal of property to prevent seizure.

Toliver was one of more than 50 people indicted by federal prosecutors last summer as part of a drug investigation in the Manhattan area. The investigation was connected to a fentanyl overdose death of a Kansas State University student in 2017. Toliver was 32 years old at the time she was charged.

Toliver admitted in her plea that officers with the Riley County Police Department responded to the 1000 block of Yuma Street on March 5, 2019. First responders found Terriundis Toliver unconscious and in respiratory distress.

As the first responders rendered aid to Terriundis Toliver, Chanel Toliver reached into his jeans pocket and tried to take a baggie filled with about a quarter of a gram of heroin and fentanyl. She later admitted to law enforcement in an interview that she was trying to take the heroin and fentanyl mixture so that she could hide it from the cops.

At the time of the incident, Terriundis Toliver was being investigated by RCPD and the Drug Enforcement Administration as a suspected drug distributor, according to court records.

Federal court records do not state what happened to Terriundis Toliver. However, RCPD said at the the time that a 35-year-old man died of a drug overdose near 10th and Yuma, KMAN radio reported. Police did not identify the man. He was one of two people to die after heroin-laced fentanyl overdoses that day, WIBW TV reported.

An online memorial indicates Terriundis Toliver died in March 2019, and that he was married to Chanel Toliver.